South Western Railways - new timetable from 17th Jan 2022

[whole diary]

[grahame]

An update to say "there is no update" on my query to SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) of 17th January, concerning removal of the last train of the day from Westbury to Salisbury, and SWR failing to offer their own trains by default for Exeter St Davids to Waterloo journeys, but (rather) higher priced alternatives using GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) services.

Bradford-on-Avon and Trowbridge to Waterloo / South Eastern destinations
Former users of the SWR services that the ceased to run after 10th December also report booking engines  no longer offering journeys via Salisbury, but rather higher priced ones with multiple changes at Bath, Chippenham, Swindon or Westbury, and at Paddington.   Yes, people "in the know" can usually find a "via" or "avoid" option to select their routing, but xx% of people won't know that, where xx is a not insignificant number.

[Mark A]

Is that because the booking engine's optimised to pick the quickest available journey and the connections at Salisbury/Basingstoke/both are so miserable that it avoids them.

It's making me think of journeys after six pm from Waterloo to Bristol via Salisbury. For all but one, the system flags connections via Southampton and can fail to mention that for the past... whenever, that's not been a valid route, though if one's looking to buy a single, there *are* actually advance purchase fares via Southampton, which sort of adds insult to injury.

[ChrisB]

Yes, that’s correct

[stuving]

From SWR^» (South Western Railway - about)'s timetables page:

These temporary timetable changes will remain under review going forward. Journey planners will be updated on a week-by-week basis, with updates taking place towards the end of each week.

I'm not sure if that's new wording, or I just missed it before. Of course we already knew it, and it did happen again last week.

[grahame]

Back to through services from Exeter and Weymouth and (though not explicitly confirmed) the vital last Westbury to Salisbury train from 21st February - see http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=25879.msg318383#msg318383 (as the two threads are coming together).